Until then it meant the keeping on the move, ceaselessly, aimlessly, in order to prevent the frost from biting the face and limbs, it meant wearily waiting in incessant, nerve-racking movement for every quarter of an hour tolled by the unseen cathedral clock; it meant counting these and the intervening minutes which crawled along on the leaden stilts of time, until the head began to buzz and the brain to ache with the intensity of monotony and of fatigue. It meant the steeling of iron nerves, the bracing of hardy sinews, the keeping the mind clear and the body warm.
Two hours to kill under the perpetual lash of a tearing north wind, gliding up and down a half league of frozen way so as not to lose the track in the darkness and with a shroud of inky blackness to envelop everything around!
The hardened campaigner stood the test as only a man of abnormal physique and body trained to privations could have stood it. As soon as the thin grey light began to spread over the sky and picked out a few stunted snow-covered trees, one by one, he once more started on his way.
He had less than a league to cover now, and when at last the cathedral tower boomed out the hour of seven he was squatting on the bank of the Oude Gracht in Haarlem, and with numbed fingers and many an oath was struggling with the straps of his skates.
A quarter of an hour later he was installed in his friend's studio in front of a comfortable fire and with a mug of hot ale in front of him.
"I didn't think that you really meant to come," Frans Hals had said when he admitted him into his house in response to his peremptory ring.
"I mean to have some breakfast now at any rate, my friend," was the tired wayfarer's only comment.
The artist was too excited and too eager to get to work to question his sitter further. I doubt if in Diogenes' face or in his whole person there were many visible traces of the fatigues of the night.
"What news in Haarlem?" he asked after the first draught of hot ale had put fresh life into his veins.
"Why? where have you been that you've not heard?" queried Hals indifferently.